


The Linchpin

by canarynoir



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canarynoir/pseuds/canarynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki reflects upon where it all went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Linchpin

**Author's Note:**

> This is a quick little character piece, written fast to get my fanfic engine jump-started again. All errors and typos deeply regretted.

Stark was the linchpin – a fitting metaphor for an ironmonger. Loki had understood that almost at once, even in the glimpse he'd caught as he'd been led past the lab on his way to the monster's prison. Stark was the axis of the team around which they all radiated unawares. Take out Stark, and the rest would fall away.

Preparing for the fight he knew would eventually come, Loki had studied them all, readying the perfect weapon to destroy each one should the necessity arise. The misfire of his dance with the woman had been a momentary set-back, but there had been no recovery possible from the series of miscalculations and shocks that had been his first, face-to-face encounter with Tony Stark.

Stark had seemed the easiest target of them all. He was certainly the weakest link in terms of skill. Without his suit – as his own teammate, the disgustingly naïve, ridiculously-named Captain America had pointed out – what was Stark? An arrogant fool. A dilettante. A mere _human_ , not even trained in the most basic aspects of a warrior's role.

Loki shook his head. _What was Stark?_ He laughed at the stupidity of the question and even more at the pathetic answers he'd formulated in preparation for their confrontation.

_He beat me unarmed, unarmored, and alone. With a glass of spirits in his hand._

Loki thought he should have known he'd underestimated his opponent when the man had walked out of his armor – the only thing that gave him any power in such a contest – and into the same space as a god without breaking stride.

_I lived my life amongst heroes and warriors, but I have never before witnessed an act of such bravery._

Loki had made his fatal mistake, he thought, when only a few moments later, he'd shaken off the sense that even a bloodied, exhausted, and unarmored Stark might be a match for him. 

He'd taken the man's obvious physical weakness as true weakness. Stark's hands, pouring out his distraction into a glass, had trembled so slightly, only a god would have noticed it as the man had talked and talked and talked his way into Loki's righteous rage.

_Could defenestration have been his plan all along? So focused was I on the tremor beneath the words, I failed to notice that he never stopped moving._

Loki knew his own plan had been perfection – to strike the heart of a team not yet fully-formed, the members of which already believed themselves heart-broken. _They have no idea the devastation the loss of Stark would have visited upon them._ As a distraction to their fight against the Chitauri, having Stark under his control would have served a good enough purpose, but Loki knew the _fatal_ blow to the so-called Avengers' ability to fight together would have come from what Stark's loss represented.

For Stark understood each and every one of his teammates in ways they realized only in their bones. Like the woman, Stark had the blood of innocents on his hands – red on his ledger, she would call it; like the archer, Stark had suffered capture and the loss of self; like the one-eyed spy, Stark had survived irreparable, disfiguring damage; like Loki's fool of a brother, Stark had come to realize and repent the unintended consequences of his own pride and arrogance; like the monster, Stark had seen his own work spiral out of his control and bring destruction beyond his ability to truly repair; and like the silly, naïve captain, Stark had lost someone to whom he owed more than could be repaid and had lost loved ones irretrievably to time, his business with them forever unfinished.

It seemed telling to Loki now, as he looked back on his failure, that of them all, Stark alone had known the monster would return. 

Loki was as certain, even if none of them would ever admit it even to themselves, that Stark alone of all of them had been certain that – opposed by the people whose souls Stark saw so clearly – Loki could not win.

How foolish of the captain not to see what Stark was. _How foolish of me. To throw the only one of them who could fly out of the window._

As Loki had looked down in a confusion of disappointment that their duel had come to an end and furious delight at the destruction of  the infuriating gnat who'd troubled him, he'd felt his heart and breath catch as the man instead shot up into the sky. His jaw had fallen slack as his gaze had tracked the bright red-and-gold suit up into the blue.

It was at that moment, Loki knew Stark had been right, and it was at that moment that Loki knew why: Like Loki, Stark had lived his life with the wound made by his formidable father's disappointment in him. 

Unlike Loki, Stark had not allowed his wound to fester.

Stark was the linchpin, and Loki knew now that Stark had always known this. Indeed, Loki reflected, an ironmonger knew the importance of a linchpin better than anyone.


End file.
